Just NBC Yet Another Deceptive Edit

There is another editing controversy brewing at MSNBC. Republicans are pouncing on the allegation that MSNBC producers edited Georgia’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Michelle Nunn’s response to a question about the Affordable Care Act to make it seem more nuanced and conservative.

“Republicans need six seats to win back the Senate, and Nunn could be the key to preventing that,” said NBC News reporter Kasie Hunt in an introduction to a packaged profile on Nunn that aired on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “But, sometimes, it’s hard to tell she is a Democrat.”

When Hunt asked Nunn if she would have voted for the ACA, the Democratic candidate launched into a reply that dodged the question. Hunt pressed her to respond with a yes or no answer, to which Nunn replied, “I think it’s impossible to look back retrospectively and say, ‘What would you have done if you were there?’”

Edits like those done to Nunn can be innocuous and may simply have been made in order to package the interview to meet broadcast time constraints. Even if this was true, however, the practical effect of those edits made Nunn seem slightly more in line with Georgia’s voters on the Affordable Care Act rather than the national Democratic Party. As the transcript that Nunn’s campaign provided Weigel shows, she is far more in tune with her party’s position on the ACA than MSNBC’s interview made it appear.

Mediaite reached out to MSNBC for comment on this matter but had not received a reply prior to this publication. This post will be updated with MSNBC’s response.

UPDATE: Responding to Mediaite’s inquiry, an MSNBC spokesperson says that the edits were made in order to comport with broadcast time constraints and not to remove content from Nunn’s interview with Hunt. The full video of Nunn’s comments on the ACA have been posted to MSNBC.com.

So just to review: NBC will be happy to edit audio when it smells racism — transforming George Zimmerman, of partially Hispanic decent — into an anti-black racist…

…NBC will supply a Democrat spokesperson talking points pre-loaded into the teleprompter, the likely cause of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s infamous “Myzled” gaffe from November of last year…

…And it will tweak audio to soften a Democrat candidate’s position on a volatile issue. Why, it’s almost as if there’s a pattern to this stuff.

Also, every Republican politician and conservative interviewee should be aware that MSNBC (and presumably their parent network as well) will allow those being videotaped that to record their interviews separately, and they would be a fool not to do so, given NBC’s long history of playing fast and loose with the truth.